Aya Calypso
Aya Calypso (production code: A-C) is an android catgirl and one of the many police robots created by DI-LAWS, a cross-dimensional law enforcement unit. While she generally has her own adventures, she holds several connections to the Typhoon Compass dimension, having both met Valley and her crew and found a good friend in Arianna Sage Gabl. She is also an idiot. Appearance Aya looks to be a short prepubescent girl with green eyes, tan skin, short spiky black hair, cat ears and a tail. It's hard to tell her apart from a normal organic person, but perceptive people may notice that her skin is too smooth and doll-like to be real, lacking things like fingerprints or visible veins. Plus she weighs a lot more than a girl her size should. Underneath her fake skin, Aya is a Terminator-like metal skeleton who is much less pleasing to look at. Her hair consists of advanced fiber-optics capable of taking on any shape or colour she wishes, though it's usually left as is. Oh, and she has fangs. Off-duty, Aya dresses in a midriff-revealing black t-shirt, a blue vest and pleated skirt and white thighsocks and bracelets (see above). When she's on the job, she wears the standard DI-LAWS Patrol Division uniform, consisting of a white jumpsuit and blue pieces of light armour on her torso and limbs. She can also don a spiked helmet if she requires extra protection. Aya always wears a bell around her neck and a gold hairclip in her hair. Image:ArmorAya1.png|Aya in uniform. Image:ArmorAya2.png|Aya in confrontation mode with helmet. Image:ArmorAya3.jpg|Aya in full battle mode with several weapons and the helmet's faceshield deployed. Personality "Airhead" would be an appropriate word to describe Aya. A mirror image of her sister Arma, she's incredibly cheerful and energetic, able to see the bright side of any situation, and at the same time clueless, naive, forgetful and easily distracted. Her undefeatable spirit endears her to many and has garnered her a lot of friends, though more serious-minded individuals like her own superiors tend to find her annoying. It's rare to see her get serious or angry, and with her childish demeanour, the latter just results in her throwing a tantrum anyway (as this is the equivalent of a B-52 throwing a tantrum, those around her try to keep her happy for their own safety). Unsurprisingly, Aya is prone to making mistakes, usually requiring someone to keep an eye on her, a role filled by Arma or her ship's AI, Frey. Aya is social and loves making new friends--she considers it so important that her brain files friendships as "vital data", which means she never forgets the names or faces of her friends even when she forgets everything else she learns within days. She is quick to take action if she sees her friends getting hurt, and has a tendency for heroic self-sacrifice. As an advanced android, Aya has no need for sustenance or sleep, but enjoys eating and sleeping anyway to pass the time and better relate to her many organic friends. If encountered in battle, Aya is a strange sight. She doesn't take fighting for her life seriously and does battle with a happy smile on her lips as if it were all a game to her, which it probably is. In extreme cases she even fails to take her opponents' lives seriously, causing her to be disconcertingly merciless without someone to guide her actions. This is mostly because she doesn't fully understand death and easily forgets that people cannot always be "fixed". Aya cares not about strategy, and thinks it's much more fun to unleash her entire arsenal of hidden weaponry and watch the pretty explosions. This usually causes more damage to her surroundings than her enemies. Weapons and abilities With her sturdy nekonium skeleton, Aya is naturally stronger and more adorable durable than most organics of her size and build. She is capable of lifting objects weighing up to a ton above her head and can shrug off attacks from many types of weapons, such as ordinary bullets and blades. Her uniform is equipped with a basic force field, increasing her defense even more when she's on duty. Most notably, though, she is literally armed to the teeth with hidden gadgets and weaponry. As lifeforms and their weaknesses vary greatly throughout dimensions, Aya's body was designed with battle variety in mind, and is armed with weapons to deal with as many situations as her designers could think of. This includes, but is not limited to projectile, energy, temperature-based and sonic weapons. A list of some of her armaments and tools includes: Head *Laser eye beams. *Various optical options, such as infrared and thermal visions. *Extendable sensor whiskers. *Fire breath. Torso *Micro missile launchers in her sides. *Freeze blasters hidden in her back that flip out over her shoulders. *A rail gun in her tail. Arms *Four plasma blasters in each forearm, one on each side. By spinning her forearms, she can rapid fire them, gatling style. **Said forearms can also be fired as rocket punches. **Following a rocket punch, she can furthermore fire missiles from the hole where her elbow was. *Small, precise cutting lasers in her shoulders. *Taser devices in the palms of her hands can deliver intense electric shocks. *Her fingers and toes can extend solid-light claws up to 15 cm (6 in) for slashing or climbing. *In theory she can plug her fingers into other machinery to hack it and take control of it, though she's a pretty bad hacker and any decent firewall will put a stop to her. Legs *Several more missile launchers throughout her legs. *Sonic emitters in her hips. *Saw blades in her knees. *Maser cannons and mine dispensers in her thighs. *Jets in her feet allow her to take flight, though her maneuverability is less than stellar. And more! Trying to fight Aya with pure firepower is a bad idea--it is very hard to out-firepower her without an entire battalion on your side. If that wasn't enough, her body is modular and can have its parts switched out for specialized parts for different circumstances, such as heavier weaponry, extra armour or stealth parts. Aya runs on an external power source--a tiny dimensional wormhole inside her body connecting her to power generators at DI-LAWS HQ--providing her with a constant stream of energy that prevents her from getting tired or needing to recharge. It also gives her unlimited ammunition for her energy-based weapons and abilities, though the projectiles still need reloading. If this power connection breaks down or is somehow severed, Aya can keep functioning by running on heat energy from a furnace in her abdomen, fuelled by her simply eating anything burnable she can get her hands on. This heat energy is also what powers her fire breath. As her systems let her selectively ignore pain if she so chooses, Aya can shrug off damage to her body in order to keep going, though this is usually a bad idea since it ruins the entire purpose of pain. Since Aya's power source and most of her main systems being are located in her head, it can keep on functioning even if she's decapitated. Weaknesses As a person As mentioned repeatedly throughout this article, Aya isn't very smart--while her computer brain stores a lot of data, a slow processor makes it so she can't access this information without intense concentration. Add to this a natural tendency for distraction and concentration issues, and you're left with an Aya who "forgets" basic facts, makes easily avoidable mistakes and often ends up distracted and confused by stuff she's already experienced. She's also naturally trusting, not a desirable trait in a police officer, which makes easy to fool and take advantage of. As a fighter Aya may have dozens and dozens of weapons, but she still has no sense of strategy, even blissfully forgetting about the basics like dodging or taking cover. Practically any tactics are useful against her, as odds are she'll be taken by surprise without a clue on how to counter it. If she has allies around to give her orders, Aya can be marginally more effective in combat, though she still has a tendency to misunderstand orders that aren't clearly explained, or just outright forget her instructions by the time the fighting starts. Melee-wise, Aya knows no martial arts, and just improvises in hand-to-hand combat using her claws. She also sees no problems with using her ranged weapons in a close combat situation, and will happily fire explosives at point-blank range without considering she'll be caught in the blast. History Creation Aya was created as "A-C", the third installment of DI-LAWS's A-series, a line of androids designed for the organization's Special Operations Division. The expert team of roboticists behind the series, led by one Dr. Ake, planned for her main strength to be variety and adaptability--a built-in weapon for every occasion, like a big combat-oriented Swiss army knife. Also onboard for personal reasons was Ake's daughter, who influenced the designs of the A-series by suggesting they be cute girl robots with cat ears and tails. The rest of the team weren't too happy that the designs went in that direction, but the doctor was trying to be a good father and they ran with it for his sake. Another goal of the A-C design team was to improve on the faults of the previous two A-series androids. Both had ended up with "unstable mental processes", or rather extreme personality quirks: A-A was constantly fuming with anger and refused to cooperate with anybody, while A-B often ignored orders to do whatever she felt like. Looking at their past mistakes, the roboticists built what they deemed much more efficient personality components for A-C... and that's when they hit a snag. The DI-LAWS Economics and Energy Division would only allow a certain level of Energy Constant (fuel beamed straight to a target through a Zero Manipulator) for each android, and A-C's extensively armed body combined with its advanced brain ended up exceeding the allotted energy budget. The E&E's decision was adamant, and the design team had no choice but to lower the amount of energy A-C would use up. Arguments broke out as neither the designers of the brain or the designers of the body (mostly Dr. Ake) refused to lower the quality of their work, but after days of shouting and gnashing of teeth they came to an agreement. They downscaled A-C's entire body structure, taking out just a few weapons like the chest-lightning, thus keeping the resulting android within budget even though she ended up rather short. Once activated and and given the full name Aya Calypso, the newest addition to the DI-LAWS police force was sent to boot-up camp, where she immediately proved that her creators had picked a poor compromise. In the process of downscaling her body, they had to take out several vital processors and suchlike, without which her computer brain couldn't function at full capacity. So while Aya did indeed end up being as happy, loyal and heavily armed as planned, she was also as stupid as a plank. By the time she was done failing most boot-up tests not relating to destruction, the brain and body sides of the design team had schismed and vowed never to work together again, and soon thereafter the heads of the Robotics and Recruitment Division deemed the entire A-series a failed project and had it cancelled. Meanwhile, Aya herself made a lot of friends in her boot-up camp class and was very happy with her new existence. Early life Following boot-up camp, Aya was assigned to the Spec Ops Division she was designed for, and promptly proved unsuitable for the strategies and planning often required for their operations. She was dismissed after crashing her assigned dimensionship soon after receiving it. After struggling for a while to find a line of work appropriate for her goldfish brain, the people responsible for Aya eventually shoveled her into a low-ranking post in the Patrol Division. Her duty there would involve floating between dimensions while trying to detect dimensional breaches, a dull but easy job that required no real skills beyond "be able to keep an eye open and pilot a ship". Since she wasn't able to pilot a ship, however, Aya was partnered with an AI named Frey, who had similarly been kicked out of the Information Division. Thus, Aya was presented with the Snowstorm, an old DI-LAWS dimensionship (fearing another crash, they refused to let her use a new, expensive one) with Frey installed as the standard ship computer to keep an eye on her and hopefully teach her a thing or two about... everything. Though Frey chafed with his mission, Aya was elated to have a partner and decided that he was her new best friend. And so began a strange relationship based on Frey's attempts to make Aya smarter and Aya's attempts to make Frey nicer. During her early days in DI-LAWS, Aya made many friends among the other personnel, even becoming a mascot of sorts for the Patrol Division, but unsurprisingly the strongest bonds she formed was with her older "sisters", the aforementioned androids A-A and A-B, or Arma Agdos and Ariel Bastet as they are properly known. The two sisters weren't entirely friendly with each other at the time, but Aya pushed for them to become a real family. Being the stubborn optimist she was, Aya was the first person to actually enjoy being around Arma, though the feeling was hardly mutual at first. Eventually, however, Arma began to warm up the idea of being liked, and though she would never admit it, her icy demeanour melted just a bit in regards to her new sister. Ariel got along well with Aya from the start, but she was going through a period of unease at the time, unhappy with her work and unsure of what her life would amount to. Aya absentmindedly suggested she try doing something else for a while, leading to Ariel steeling her resolve and quitting DI-LAWS to hunt her dreams. This turn of events hurt Aya, who hadn't meant for it to go that far and considered leaving DI-LAWS to be the same as abandoning your family, and she began throwing tantrums and refusing to do her work. Awkward attempts at emotional support by Arma, who went so far as to give Aya a gift in the form of a golden hairclip, eventually calmed her down, strengthening the two sisters' relationship in the process. Once Ariel settled down in dimension F91113-1020, Aya and Arma began regularly visiting her. Subsequent adventures Due to Aya's constant time travel and her creation "outside of time", it's unknown exactly how long Aya has been around and worked for DI-LAWS, but it could be hundreds or even thousands of years. During all this time, she has kept her position in the Patrol Division, upholding a mediocre mission success rate that prevents her from even coming close to a promotion. As part of the Patrol Divison, Aya is almost always drifting between universes on the Snowstorm, constantly watching out for dimensional disturbances (or rather, Frey is watching out while she fools around). She considers her ship to be her home and rarely spends much time at her quarters at the Nexus, though she returns there at least once a year to receive maintenance from Blanc. A dimension lost During a routine journey to another dimension, Aya accidentally had the Snowstorm jump into an uncatalogued universe, unleashing spatial energy that caught the attention of an ancient entity, sealed away in this universe by forces unknown. Setting the ship down on a nearby planet to explore, Aya found a strange boxy animal that took to liking her. While playing with this Box Fox, she was tracked down and approached by the evil entity, who revealed its intention to collapse the universe into a new Big Bang and feed on the energy unleashed, but first it would devour the Snowstorm and learn to wield its dimension-hopping energies. Aya didn't really understand but tried to fight the entity, which merely absorbed her attacks and forced her to retreat into unspace, taking Box Fox with her. Returning to the Nexus, Frey intended to report that this dimension was to be avoided as to not give the entity a second chance to absorb Zero Manipulator energy, only to find that the coordinates no longer led anywhere: the entity had gone through with its plan and destroyed the universe. And little did he or Aya know, the energy it had absorbed from Aya's attacks was enough to let it reverse-engineer Zero Manipulator portals... and follow them. But at least Box Fox survived and became Aya's partner/pet from then on. Pirate hunting When DI-LAWS detected the interdimensional pirate Vain traveling to dimension F91113-1020 using stolen and dangerous technology, Aya was ordered to track down and confiscate the tech, being as she was the officer with the most experience with said dimension (aside from Arma, who was busy). Mistaking Vain's aura for that of Valley Stormwind, her alt in F91113-1020, she instead ended up attempting to arrest Stormwind, captain of the Typhoon Compass. Valley naturally refused, having never heard of Vain nor DI-LAWS, but Aya stubbornly believed she was Vain in disguise and had Frey warp the Snowstorm into the Typhoon Compass's hangar, boarding it. This act led to a battle with the crew, the Stormwind Pirates, which hit a stalemate: Aya could not defeat the whole crew, and they in turn underestimated her small frame. The fighting came to an end once Frey was able to contact and compare notes with the Typhoon Compass's own AI, Dione, who proved that Valley was a separate entity from Vain. After apologizing profusely, Aya explained her situation to Valley, who forgave her and, interested in her mission, even offered to help. The experienced Stormwinds provided Aya with info that let her track Vain's ship, the Maurovolans, to the planet Novos Solum. Vain, not too willing to be captured by some little girl, resisted arrest and engaged her in ship-to-ship combat ending with the smaller Snowstorm sustaining major damage. Aya could do nothing but watch the pirate escape unmolested as her crippled ship fell to the planet below. Shipwrecked The Snowstorm crashed violently in a mountain range on Novos Solum, wrecking it entirely. The impact knocked Frey offline while Aya was trapped under debris and suffered a nasty blow to the head which broke her Zero Manipulator, severing her connection to the Nexus. This meant that 1) she was unable to send an SOS message home, 2) she had to rely on external energy (i.e. eating fuel) to keep going and 3) she could no longer use most of her built-in weapons because of their heavy energy consumption. Without self-repair systems or Frey's medi-drones to repair her, she was in dire straits, especially after having to amputate her left arm to escape the debris. After waiting for help at her wrecked ship for a while, Aya got bored and decided to search for someone who could repair it instead. Leaving Box Fox to guard the Snowstorm for her, she began traveling across Novos Solum, ending up on various adventures and misadventures until she got in some real trouble and was bailed out by Arianna Sage Gabl, a local cyborg girl. They two hit it off and Arianna brought Aya to her friend and mechanic Cyllene Anan, who was able to provide her with a new arm and power source. Aya remained on the planet for a while after that, hanging out with Arianna, but eventually grew bored of waiting once again. She decided to get proactive and find help herself in the form of the only DI-LAWS officer she knew in this universe: Ariel. Problem was, she couldn't remember what planet Ariel lived on. The sister search Positive that she could find Ariel if she just tried, Aya said goodbye to Arianna and stowed aboard a trade barge that took her off-world. So she began to search for clues based on what she could remember about Ariel's planet, such as it having water on it and her finding an interesting rock there once. Eventually, Aya encountered the Stormwind Pirates a second time. Since they were avid travelers, she asked to join them on their journeys just in case they ended up on Ariel's world, or at least found any clues as to where it was. Valley accepted on the condition that she make herself useful, appointing Aya as a sort of honorary Stormwind Pirate. After another series of misadventures, Aya reached her goal and Ariel was able to contact DI-LAWS for her. The Snowstorm was salvaged and she returned to her duties. A younger sibling Relationships Arma Agdos Aya holds her onee-chan older sister Arma in high regards. Impressed by her intelligence, combat abilities and higher rank, Aya very much looks up to her and wants to be like her some day. While often annoyed and exasperated by Aya's mindless optimism and stupidity, the usually cold and distant Arma has a soft spot for her little sister, and shoots her far less venomous comments than she does most people. Aya is mostly oblivious to them anyway. Ariel Bastet As a fellow optimist who would rather act than think, Aya's other older sister Ariel is mentally closer to her than Arma is, and they're great friends. Aya doesn't seem to hold as much respect for Ariel as she does for Arma, though, and doesn't understand why anyone would want to quit DI-LAWS and leave their family behind like she did. In spite of this, Aya still loves Ariel, and often visits her at her new home on planet Aauu, directly leading to Aya's special interest in the TyCom dimension (in which Aauu resides). Frey Much like Arma, Aya's AI partner Frey is always bothered by her constant mistakes and is always trying to teach her how to do things correctly in a rather insulting manner. Unfortunately, Aya doesn't respect him nearly as much as she does Arma, and often ignores both his smug superiority and useful advice alike. That said, she still considers him a good friend, albeit an annoying one. Box Fox While Aya's long-time companion Box Fox appears to be just an animal, she insists that it's her equal as a partner and not a pet. However their relationship really works is unclear, but regardless Box Fox is rarely seen away from Aya's side, and she won't let anyone hurt it. Arianna Sage Gabl Arianna is Aya's BFF! They like to play around. Franz Walker Franz is her... other BFF. Though she's a thief. Valley Stormwind Footnotes Category:DI-LAWS Category:Androids Category:Female Characters